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 Posted: Tue Aug 01, 2006 9:07 am
I think what is intresting is the whole continent of africa. How tribes that are only probly a few miles apart have a completely diffrent language system. so i personally thing that it has something to do with the environment your your in at the time. Like maybe how the rain effects your life in a certain area, say on the east coast there is rarely any rain but when it come they praise it and everything. but then on the west coast when it rains it floods killing of people and crops and stuff like that. hopefully you understand what im trying to say sweatdrop
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Posted: Sun Aug 27, 2006 7:20 am
A random thought occurred to me on the bus the other day, and so this has no research to back it. But, from the languages I have studied or have had some exposure to, it seems that a child's words for "mother" and "father" tend to be rather similar.
Like English's "mama" and "papa/dada". They are simple sounds that babies repeat, and I think that it is possible that those sounds were just given the meaning that they have now.
Like I said, random.
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Posted: Mon Aug 28, 2006 7:05 pm
Ever since humans discovered their ability to vocalize, they've experimented with the different sounds they could make... my guess is they probably decided that it would be easy to "name" the things that they saw.. i.e., give it a title made from their ability to vocalize. For instance, if I'd pretended I'd forgotten all my language, and looked up at the moon, I'd probably want to call it 'vutu.' I'd likewise probably want to adress the sun as 'flaus.' eek
I know, my choice of words would be weird, but.. our ancestors likely did the same thing... they titled things based on what they looked like to them. Kinda similar to the nature of "well that guy looks like more of a 'Walter' to me...", only done with all objects.
I'm kinda out of it right now so it may sound like I'm on crack or something. burning_eyes Sorry about that. I hardly know how to explain myself at the moment.
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Posted: Tue Aug 29, 2006 6:21 am
Progenii A random thought occurred to me on the bus the other day, and so this has no research to back it. But, from the languages I have studied or have had some exposure to, it seems that a child's words for "mother" and "father" tend to be rather similar. Like English's "mama" and "papa/dada". They are simple sounds that babies repeat, and I think that it is possible that those sounds were just given the meaning that they have now. Like I said, random. Actually, I think there is research into the mama and papa thing. They speculate that they were the first words of any language, and the words originate in the iname babble babies initially speak. But, I can't quote anything.
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Posted: Wed Aug 30, 2006 2:11 am
maybe because of the tower of babel and god changing the languages, but then not all peoples came from the middle east.
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Posted: Wed Aug 30, 2006 3:49 am
Did you know that in the Mbabaram language of northeastern Australian Aboriginals the word for "dog" is "dog". Is this purely a coincidence? (Well it actually is a coincidence seeing how English is an Indo-European language and Mbabaran is a Pama-Nyungan language, which means that the languages are entirely unrelated sweatdrop It's a pretty neat coincidence though isn't it)
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Posted: Wed Aug 30, 2006 4:11 am
Caerwiden Did you know that in the Mbabaram language of northeastern Australian Aboriginals the word for "dog" is "dog". Is this purely a coincidence? (Well it actually is a coincidence seeing how English is an Indo-European language and Mbabaran is a Pama-Nyungan language, which means that the languages are entirely unrelated sweatdrop It's a pretty neat coincidence though isn't it) Holy Guacamole, that is interesting.
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Posted: Tue Sep 05, 2006 5:59 pm
@Spanishnerd- about your 2nd question, 'how did so many languages form?'
There is a very interesting theory out there related to that, which has so far been proved true in a number of cases.
Many people believe that by tracing language history, we can trace genetics/ancestry. One example of this is the Indo-European languages which are believed by some to all come from a common Proto-Indo-European language spoken by the Indo-Aryan race (not to be confused with Hitler's 'blond hair blue eyes' crap. he's the only person in history to have believed that the blond/blue thing was true - many genecists aren't even sure if the Indo-Aryan race was white....)
Another example is the Semitic languages, which stem from a Proto-Semitic language that existed about 4000 years ago. Similarly, races associated with Semitic languages (Jews, Arabs, etc) have proven to all be part of a large 'Semitic race' ...
My guess is that as these few races split up into different countries, the language began to grow into a bunch of dialects, and eventually into several individual languages that are just related...
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Posted: Wed Sep 06, 2006 3:32 am
I'd say the developmen of many different languages works in the same way as micro-evolution does. And that is, populations simlpy become isolated.
Perhaps you have one tribe, and for whatever reason splits and goes their separate ways. Over a number of generations, the lanuage has changed, and given more time, there's more room for random change, and thus given the different changes in the two tribes, two different, but related languages are form.
You have to remember that very long ago, there were no writting systems, so there was no specific rules for spelling or grammar in a sense, so long as it all made sense. I doubt there would've been many grammar nazis roaming around.
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Posted: Sun Sep 10, 2006 2:30 pm
What about some word that means "I" or "I am"? The verb "to be" is one of the first words you learn in any language. Wouldn't proto-humans have to be aware of themselves first before saying words to other little proto-humans running around? Many times when we communicate with someone, we communicate one of our own desires. "I want this." "This is mine."
It's just an idea I want to throw out there.
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Posted: Fri Oct 13, 2006 5:16 am
I haven't been in gaia much for a long time but today I happened to come here and I just had to comment on this topic.
Just to throw something in: there's been discussion about the words mama and papa here.. I don't know if many of you know or have noticed, but the word for mother in finnish is äiti, and for father it's isä. They don't resemble anything I've ran into while studying languages.. except for one thing. In chinese, the word for mother is ma or mama, but the word for aunt is ai, which is pronounced similar to the äi in äiti. Because of that it was dead easy for this orphan girl who was adopted to finland, to adjust in our language. She was so young she had only learned a few words, like ai, which she'd called the "aunties" at the orphanage. She learnt the word äiti immediately. some young children call their parents mamma or mami (mummy) but some call their grandparents by those names. finnish-swedes call their mothers mamma.
sweatdrop dramallama
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Posted: Sat Dec 30, 2006 2:04 pm
I really have no ideas....but sometimes I like to start my own language, with it's own rules....it's fun. Sadly, I've never become fluent in any of the languages I've created...
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Posted: Sun May 13, 2007 1:25 pm
A book that might of interest to some of you:
The Origin of Language: Tracing the Evolution of the Mother Tongue by Merritt Ruhlen
This book details a school of thought that languages previously considered completely unrelated are now thought to have orginiated from one common human language that started in the south of the continent of Africa. Interesting stuff!
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Posted: Fri Jun 01, 2007 8:02 am
Proudly_Jewish -some langauges (Russian, Hebrew, Finnish) have no "to have" verb. In Russian if you want to say I have a cat for example, you would literally be saying "At me there is cat" (in Hebrew and Finnish it would be "To me there is cat") You can say בשבילי יש חתול (bishvili yesh chatul, to me there is cat), however, people will either think you are trying to make fun of them or just silly. Indeed there is no such verb as "to have" in Hebrew as the verb in English, but there is a word, "יש" (yesh), that sometimes functions as "to be" verb; thus, we are saying יש לי חתול (yesh li chatul, I have a cat), although a literal translate should be "have I cat".
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Posted: Sat Jun 23, 2007 3:36 pm
There is a theory called Edenics, and it purports that Hebrew is the mother of all languages. It's an interesting theory (you can search for it on the internet). Also, before you decide how languages formed, you have to take notice of your worldview - evolutionism or creationism. No slamming the worldview you don't ascribe to, please! Worldview has a part to play in this discussion, and it must be admitted that people ALWAYS have one worldview or another!
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